Compelling Distractions: A Short Story Collection

By Paul Hellyer

The largest short story in this collection; Waking from Dreaming, follows a man who wakes up with no memory of who he is or what he is doing. Eventually it becomes apparent that he is in a world of trouble.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Feb 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9781982299125

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Copyright © 2024 Paul Hellyer.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-9913-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-9912-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024903805

Balboa Press rev. date:  02/20/2024

Contents

The Portal

Foretold

Homecoming

Unanswered Calls

Waking from Dreaming

The Past is Calling

Street Knowledge

Ship of Fools

The Elevator

The Portal

A pristine, emerald green forest, with golden yellow flowers and wheat grass speckling the otherwise perfect grass fields. In the distance, a vivid blue waterfall rolls down soft mossy rocks, and all through the air a melody of strings and flutes languidly leaves its mellowing traces on every element of the landscape. A limber, mail clad knight with long pointed ears and shimmering silver hair runs silently through the trees and grass, spiders and leafy green haired dryads to each side of him, ignoring his swift passage.

All of this shines through a monitor in a dimly lit room, empty food packages strewn across the floor. The chair at the desk is imposingly large, and padded luxuriously. The man sitting on it is completely absorbed in the screen, one hand on a mouse and the other on a keyboard. Hours pass. The knight finishes his long journey, stopping in a rustic village, making his way past throngs of seated characters in stylized medieval garb, some wearing flowing wizard’s robes, others gleaming in polished steel plate. He looks across the gathering of players, idling as merchants in the ramshackle town, but sees nothing of interest.

The hour is late. He decides to log off, shut down and sleep a dreamless sleep.

Sometime the next day, the knight is in a dark cavernous underground lair. Weird mirrored cat beasts roam predatorily across the stone bridges and through the spacious halls of stone. A party of diverse races, each brandishing a fearsome weapon, makes its way across one of the bridges to a room. Before long they are hacking and burning their way through the beasts gathered in the subterranean expanse. Time passes, and bars tracking the commodity of experience grow ever larger. The healer chats to the group about his neglected studies, pausing every so often to top up the health bars of the characters engaged in combat. The muscular, lightly clad, dagger wielding rogue talks about his other characters which are all maxed out in levels and gear, explaining to the party that he wanted to add a dagger class to his repository. The man controlling the knight, stoically takes the onslaught from the beasts while his party relentlessly slashes and ignites them, reading the conversation with moderate interest.

After uncountable time has passed, he logs off again and contemplates his life. The virtual world is to him the closest vision he has seen of perfection. People come together without judgement or criticism to help each other through their journeys, sharing small tidbits of their lives in the chat. It fills him with a warm sense of camaraderie. And the lush fantastical world of towering castles, singsong meadows and ominous underground lairs is to him, an appealing and ideal world. What if he could live there? Escape and be a living, breathing citizen of this world, forever divorced from mundane reality. These thoughts come to him often. He imagines one day a portal opening in front of him. A gateway to make fantasy reality. Would he go through it?

It is Wednesday evening, and he knows he has run short of food in his kitchen, so he grudgingly decides to walk to the nearby supermarket to restock his goods. Wearing a striped collared shirt and faded, tattered jeans, he walks out the front door, stopping to turn and lock it, not wanting to lose anything to thieves; especially his expensive computer. The sun is waning on the edge of the purple horizon, and cars whip noisily down the grey mottled roads. The brightly lit sign of the supermarket grows larger as he lumbers slowly towards it.

Inside, rows of brightly packaged goods beam with manicured intensity. He carries a makeshift plastic basket, stopping every so often to pluck an item off the shelves. People wander about up and down the lanes. When he has picked everything he needs, he makes his way to the self-checkout. He notices a man to his left with a vacant look on his face having trouble with the machine.

‘Everything okay?’ He asks him.

Turning with a look of dejection on his face, the other shopper replies, ‘Looks like I don’t have enough in my account, I don’t know why I thought I could afford this.’

He considers this for a moment, and eventually empathy, and perhaps pity, win him over.

‘I’ll take care of it.’

He swipes his phone across the other man’s card reader machine and pays for his groceries.

It is not a long walk back from the supermarket to his house. The sun has gone down, and the lights of the suburbs make the evening sky a misty grey. He thinks of that otherworldly place which consumes so much of his time. How does reality compare to it? On welfare payments he can just afford the house in which he lives, the cost of access to the game, and all the other living expenses, though money is tight. But in that realm, he works tirelessly, slaying the monstrous unthinking denizens of the world for their loot, getting by more than just sufficiently. It is a simple transaction. Play the game as it is meant to played, and you will thrive. It is only a matter of time. By contrast he remembers the times he moved from one mindless job to another. Bleak miserable factories, where time moves as slowly as syrup in winter. Every interview he had to act as though he was enthusiastic and keen to take a place in the company, when he knew of course that it would be no different from any other place he had worked. His body is also an aspect of his real life that grieves him. He now has flabby weak arms, and a protruding belly. His back can no longer handle the repetitive strain of lifting over and over again, one of the reasons why he chose to live on welfare.

Everything about that virtual world works seamlessly together. The whimsical lullaby of the music, the grand splendor of mountains, plains and castles, the graceful elven knight which is his own to inhabit and do with as he chooses. But somewhere inside he knows that nothing there is of any worth in reality. For everything he has given to that place, he has gotten nothing in return, besides pure escapism. Nevertheless, he will continue to go there. It is only a few clicks away, and then he can lose himself in the magic and the swordplay. If only something about that world could matter in reality.

He unlocks the front door and after putting away his food, slowly shuffles off to his room. Something gives him pause, and he hesitates to turn on his computer. The air stirs, electric and wild. Suddenly, a piercing light begins to shine out from one of the walls of his room, small at first but growing ever larger, until soon a round portal the size of a door has opened. He is scared at first, shocked by the sheer impossibility of the situation, and for a moment he questions his sanity. But the portal remains. He begins to peer through it, and sees that familiar lush world luminously glistening through it. He knows that place. His dream would seem to have become a reality. A silver haired supple bodied figure in shimmering mail pads slowly over to the portal, and beckons for him to come in. He recognizes his elven knight. No doubt he would become him were he to venture through, he thinks to himself.

But still he pauses. He has thought about this happening before, but never imagined it could ever really happen. What power could have – would have – done this? And why? Had God taken pity on him, or was he being tempted by the Devil? From a young age he had clung to religious notions of an afterlife. What would happen if he were to leave this world and enter the one before him? Would he live forever in that place? Wouldn’t that mean he would live forever excluded from other places? Every character in that game was essentially ageless. But as much as his heart was drawn to that fantasy, he wondered if there was enough change and variety to satiate him. After all, it was a world created by humans, it could be far less complex and detailed than reality. Even if it would be free of generic suffering – there would be no sickness, no struggling to make ends meet – perhaps it would be suffering after 50 years of being trapped in that place.

Perhaps the world he was peering into was his very own afterlife. He believed in heaven and hell, and often found himself hoping that the aspects of life which he treasured would continue on in the better of those places. Now he didn’t have to hope for it. It was there right in front of him. But what if this was some kind of a test? Heaven was supposed to be beyond your greatest imaginings of what a good life could be. He found himself questioning whether the world in front of him would be the same kind of place, after all, he could certainly imagine what it might be like.

The knight folded his hands and looked at him with an expression of impatience. Something told him this chance would come once, and once only. Was it worth the risk? Was it a risk at all? Perhaps he was overthinking things. Through the portal, things looked sharper and clearer than how he remembered it from in front of his monitor. He could even hear